The two-week commemoration encourages people to live out faith in the public square and the professional world.

CARL BUNDERSON/CNA/EWTN NEWS

WASHINGTON — The U.S. bishops’ conference has announced a second "Fortnight for Freedom," scheduled for the two weeks leading up to Independence Day, to raise awareness and support for the right to religious liberty.

“The need for prayer, education and action in defense of religious liberty has never been greater,” said Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore. “The 'Fortnight for Freedom' exists to meet that need.”

The pastoral initiative will begin with a Mass June 21 (the eve of the feast day of martyrs Sts.Thomas More and John Fisher) celebrated by Archbishop Lori at the Baltimore basilica. It will conclude at noon on July 4 with a Mass at the Washington basilica, to be celebrated by Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

The first "Fortnight for Freedom," held last year, included Masses, prayer rallies and other events aimed at prayer, education and action in order to promote and defend religious freedom.

Members of other religions joined in the fortnight, hosting events or ringing church bells in a sign of solidarity.

The two-week event is designed to “emphasize the need for conscience protection” and general religious liberty, both at home and overseas. It will focus on a broad variety of recent threats to religious freedom, including those in the realms of immigration, humanitarian aid, adoption and health care.

Among the major religious-liberty concerns in the U.S. is a federal mandate, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, that requires employers to offer health-insurance plans covering contraception, sterilization and some drugs that can cause early abortions.

While the mandate includes a religious exemption, it applies only to churches and their conventions, auxiliaries and religious orders.

Most nonprofit religious organizations, including Catholic hospitals, schools and charitable agencies, do not qualify for the exemption. After a one-year reprieve, which ends this August, they will be subject to a government “accommodation,” under which the objectionable products will be included free of charge in the health-care plans they offer. Critics argue that the objecting religious employers will still end up paying for the coverage that they consider immoral through increased premiums.

Archbishop Lori noted in his May 13 statement that the 2013 fortnight “occurs just weeks before Aug. 1, when the administration’s mandate coercing us to violate our deeply held beliefs will be enforced against most religious nonprofits.”

He added that, during this year’s fortnight, “the Supreme Court’s decisions on the definition of marriage will likely be handed down as well.”

“Those decisions could have a profound impact on religious freedom for generations to come,” he said.

In March, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two same-sex "marriage" cases, Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor. One challenges California’s Proposition 8, a state measure which recognizes marriage as existing solely between a man and a woman, and the other challenges the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Decisions in both cases are expected in late June.

In addition to the contraception mandate, the second fortnight will place a special emphasis on faith and marriage due to the Supreme Court rulings and their potential to impact religious freedom in a significant way, according to a statement from the bishops’ conference in December 2012.

A web page created by the bishops’ conference to offer resources for the pastoral strategy described the upcoming fortnight as “a visible, vibrant reminder of the God-given nature of religious liberty,” as well as the right to live out one’s faith in the public square and the professional world.

Modern threats to the Church “call for increased awareness and formation, as well as spiritual stamina and fortitude among the faithful," it explained, "so that we may all be effective and joyful witnesses of faith, hope and charity.”

Tell ya what: in the name of liberty (religious or otherwise), you stop telling me I have to follow catholic beliefs when it comes to who I marry in a secular nation, and I’ll stop telling you that you have to pay for somebody else’s contraception. Deal?

Posted by Stephen Trost on Tuesday, May, 14, 2013 10:31 AM (EST):

Religious freedom does NOT extend to forcing your religious beliefs into civil law. If we did that divorce would be illegal and I don’t see the Church advocating for that. We do see the Church advocating for discrimination against persons with same gender attraction. As the LGBT community is a minority the Church has no problem with that. They do not work against divorce as MANY Catholics are divorced. Religious freedom permits the Church to chose and advise behavior in its followers. It does not extend to non-catholics and to try and impose its beliefs in civil laws of a free nation.

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